The Dragon's Eye: Sequel to Where the Stairs Don't Go (The Corridors of Infinity Book 2)

by Shae Hutto

  “Wrong door,” muttered Amanda grimly, but then started smiling despite herself, she was so happy to not be chased by the walking dead any more. She ran her hands through her hair, ineffectually.

  “Guys,” said Claire. “That was dangerous. And a big waste of time. You should have just followed Weenie, like we agreed.” Everyone looked at the Dalmatian who hung his head in shame and tucked his tail.

  “We did,” said Amanda.

  “I see,” said Claire. “Well, no biggie. Everyone makes mistakes, I suppose,” she said uncertainly, looking at Weenie curiously. Everyone shifted their gazes from the abashed dog to Claire, who they stared at, slightly startled there was no tongue lashing in the offing. It was like a balloon had stretched to the point of failure and instead of exploding had just slowly released its pressure and lay there, flaccidly, completely devoid of excitement.

  Roger clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention. They all turned their eyes to him now, expectantly.

  “We’re needing a new plan, now, yeah?” he announced. “What say, we all go together?”

  “We’ve been over this,” said Claire, patiently. “They need to see about the Eye in the Halloween world and if I go, we could get jumped by the dragon or murdered by the inhabitants. I say they go on as planned and we go see the Queen.”

  “It couldn’t be any worse than what we just did,” said Amanda. “I’m still game.” She smiled with her best devil-may-care grin. On her burned and discolored face, it looked more like the rictus of some bloodthirsty demon.

  “Maybe find a shower? And some aloe lotion?” suggested Claire, tactfully. Amanda started digging around in her bag for a mirror.

  Roger bent down to pet Weenie and scratch under his chin. He dug in his bag and offered the dog some jerky. Weenie pepped up a bit and wagged his tail as he wolfed down the almost inedible treat.

  “I don’t know, ‘Manda,” said Nick, “Those zombies were no picnic, but at least there weren’t any werewolves. The Halloween world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

  “No sunshine at all, as I recall,” remarked Claire as she dug in her ugly orange beaded bag for a snack.

  “Why is everyone always on about werewolves?” asked Amanda, grinning. “Nobody ever has anything to say about were-bunnies, or were-squirrels.”

  “Or the dread were-sloth,” laughed Claire as she triumphantly pulled a package of processed, simulated food approximation from her bag.

  “Were-ferrets?” asked Nick, joining in with the joke.

  “Malarkey,” said Roger. “Would this veritable zoo of were-beasties be needing a were-vet?”

  Amanda looked thoughtful. “Do you mean a veterinarian who specializes in were-creatures?”

  “Lycanthropes,” said Claire, always ready to display her prodigious internal lexicon.

  “Right,” said Amanda. “A vet for, uh... lycanthropes or whatever? Or do you mean someone who was bitten by a ravening veterinarian and now every full moon they put on a lab coat and charge hundreds of dollars to x-ray your dog?”

  “Or eat your dog,” suggested Nick. There was a moment of silence and then Amanda giggled. It was a pure thing, that giggle. From the throat of a young woman came the music of a child’s amusement. Pure. And infectious. Nick laughed next but only by a second before Claire joined in, showing half eaten junk food in her mouth, which only added to the humor. It took Roger a moment but he, too, laughed; a man’s full-bodied guffaw. Weenie caught the mood and wagged his tail and looked happy for the first time since realizing he had led his people to the wrong door; comments about eating dogs notwithstanding.

  “Just don’t ask Claire to spell were-herpetologist,” said Roger when the laughing started to taper off. This caused Roger and Amanda to start a fresh round of hilarity. Nick looked perplexed, since he didn’t know about his sister’s elimination from a spelling bee a few months back over the word ‘herpetologist.’ Claire didn’t laugh, either. Instead, she bounced a half-eaten Twinkie off Roger’s head in mock anger.

  “Nobody ever remembers the words you get right,” complained Claire in exasperation before giving up and laughing along with everyone else.

  “Ok. I needed that,” said Claire when they finally got it all out of their system. “I think we all needed that. But now we need to get down to business.”

  “Oy,” said Roger, fingering the hilt of his sword. “What’s the craic?”

  “You three go get that freaking Eye,” said Claire, pointing to Nick, Amanda and Weenie in turn. “We are going to see the Queen. Whoever gets back here first, camp out by the other door. On the inside. Ok. Any questions?”

  Tears of laughter had caused what was left of Amanda’s mascara to run, making her look even more hideous than before. Claire thought she would blend in with the denizens of the Halloween world just fine, but thought it might be impolite to mention that. Nick looked refreshed and less dark than he had been looking lately. It wasn’t a physical shading, so much, as an emotional darkness; an aura of not-rightness. Whatever it was, it receded a bit and that made Claire glad. She wondered if that little black dagger of his had something to do with his recent darkness, but now was not the time to delve into that particular mystery. She reached down and scratched Weenie’s head.

  “Good boy,” she said and kissed the Dalmatian on the head. “Look after my brother, OK?”

  “Woof,” agreed Weenie seriously.

  “Oh,” she added as the trio started moving off down the hall. “I didn’t ask last time. How are you guys on weaponry?”

  “Don’t ask,” said Nick as they moved farther away. “Just don’t ask.” Amanda turned around and winked at Claire and started skipping down the hallway. Claire was starting to think Amanda wasn’t right in the head. Well, who was these days? She looked at Roger who was watching Nick and Amanda as they disappeared around a corner. She felt sure Roger’s gaze was spending too much time lingering in the vicinity of Amanda’s rear end. Despite this, she was glad to see Amanda walk away. Oddly, she felt happy that she had Roger all to herself, like things were back to normal. Or closer to normal, anyway. There wasn’t anything normal going on at the moment, but Claire figured it all depends on what you’re used to. She grabbed Roger by the shirt and started pulling him down the hallway towards where she thought the fairy tale world door was.

  “Come on, Paddy,” she said. “We’ve got royalty waiting on us.”

  “Stop acting the Baluba,” Roger protested against the rough treatment. “Remember, I was creamed out of it, not so long ago, I was.”

  “You were what?” Claire stopped and looked at Roger in complete bewilderment.

  “Sports reference,” he said. “Sorry. I got all punctured and all. Was in hospital? You remember?” Claire nodded her understanding, then acted like she was about to hit him in the side. To his credit, he barely flinched. He did frown at her, though.

  “Come on, tough guy,” she said, this time grabbing his hand instead of his shirt. She didn’t see it, but his frown turned into a grin as they hurried down the hallway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Here’s Blood in Your Eye.

  “I’m not a real Halloween kind of guy, because Halloween is every day.”

  - Al Jourgensen

  Weenie was determined to ignore any and all extraneous scents on his way to the door to the Halloween world. He moved with singular canine purpose, his nose sifting and sorting the delicate bouquet of the corridor for one particular trace out of hundreds of thousands. All food related scents were filtered out and discarded by his one-track brain. His already complex task was made even more complicated by the tendency of the corridor’s doors to migrate. It was easier for Weenie to accept than most people, simply because he already had to accept so many things that were beyond his intellectual capacity to figure out. Moving doors were just one more mystery to the mind of a dog; no more or less enigmatic than automobiles or elevators. He did understand enough about them to know how to navigate almost as well as Claire. Better when his s
uperior olfactory senses were factored in.

  Amanda seemed to take it on faith that the dog they were following knew where he was going. She alternated between skipping and walking, sometimes humming or whistling pieces of popular songs. Despite her recent multiple brushes with death and physical trauma, she seemed to be enjoying herself enormously. Nick was splitting his attention between examining every door they came to and watching Amanda with interest. He wasn’t sure Amanda was in the greatest mental health, but she was exciting to be around. He almost walked into Weenie when the dog stopped before a door because he was watching Amanda instead. She giggled. Weenie just sniffed the door and then put his paw on it. He ‘woofed’ softly for good measure.

  This door’s handle was silver, and it was ornately decorated with vines, pumpkins and small bat carvings. Oddly, there was a large burned and melted spot on the door handle that looked like a recent addition.

  “This must be the place,” said Nick unnecessarily.

  “Oh, goodie,” exclaimed Amanda sarcastically as she clapped her hands together in mock excitement. Or maybe it was real excitement. It was tough to tell with her. “Put me in, coach,” she said enigmatically and grabbed the door handle. Weenie moved to the side and Nick nodded at her.

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  Amanda opened the door with one hand, pulling her blaster with the other, and charged through the door, ready to start shooting at the drop of a hat. Nick followed more cautiously and Weenie brought up the rear, confident there were no immediate threats on the other side. Indeed, no hats fell. The air coming through the door smelled of dried corn, dirt and old soot. There was a faint olfactory trace of the werewolf they had encountered here, but it was old and faded.

  They emerged from the doorway of an old, burned out shell of a farmhouse into a dilapidated cornfield that still bore the scars of Claire and Roger’s battle with a werewolf a few months back. The entire scene was amply lighted by a huge full moon that hung suspended in a nearly cloudless sky. Bats zipped and darted about, feasting on a multitude of bugs. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled. A pleasantly cool breeze stirred the warm night air and sent shivers down Nick’s spine.

  “Looks like Halloween to me,” said Amanda, pocketing her blaster and looking around for a trail through the corn. “Let’s go trick-or-treating.”

  “Or we can go find this old hag and the Eye,” suggested Nick.

  “That’s what I meant, kiddo,” she clarified. “Good job, boy,” she said to Weenie and patted him on the back. “Now take us to the Witch, if you can, ok?”

  Weenie looked at her, licked her hand and then started off down one of the trails of crushed corn stalks at a fast walk. Nick and Amanda followed him, both ready for anything at first. Despite their vigilance, boredom and the difficulty of walking through a cornfield in the gloom soon caused them to drop their guard and concentrate on following their canine guide without falling on their faces. Just when Nick was starting to think that maybe this cornfield was a never-ending trap like the one in the Minotaur’s world, the cornfield abruptly ended, depositing the trio onto a dirt track through the open countryside. Their emergence took them by surprise and Nick stopped with no warning as he registered his sudden change in surroundings. Amanda ran into him from behind, nearly knocking him from his feet and causing him to stumble into a sign that read, “The Hollow”. The rickety sign promptly collapsed into the grass and vanished from the ken of mortal men. After Nick regained his balance, he turned around with an angry expression clearly visible on his face in the bright moonlight.

  “Whoops,” said Amanda, oblivious or at least pretending to be oblivious to his hostile expression. “I almost ran you over. Sorry about that, Nick.” She smiled at him and despite her current state of raggedness, her smile was still quite disarming. Amanda touched Nick’s arm as she spoke and was inwardly relieved to see Nick’s hostile expression dissolve instantly. She also noted happily that that creepy black dagger vanished out of his hand.

  “No problem,” he mumbled uncomfortably. “Let’s keep a move on. Weenie, boy. Which way?”

  Weenie looked in turn at both his companions, sensing the tension and its sudden shift. He woofed softly and turned left down the dirt track, into a spooky forest, heading for town. Amanda and Nick zoned out as they walked down the track, lighted by the unmoving moon that failed to penetrate very far into the woods they soon found themselves in. They stumbled intermittently on roots and brushed hanging branches and the occasional spider’s web out of their faces in annoyance, but they did so in silence. Just before they rounded the final little hill before town, they started to hear the sounds of construction. Somebody up ahead was building something using hammers and nails. They all stopped when the track exited the woods and revealed a rundown village with city aspirations. The architecture varied from house to house, but it all looked old to Nick.

  The construction sounds were coming from the efforts of a crew of pumpkin-headed scarecrows who were nearly finished building what looked to be a dilapidated tavern. Although the construction was fresh, the building looked ancient. Amanda stifled a laugh when she noticed that the construction crew was using what appeared to be pre-weathered and warped boards and bent and rusted nails to build their less than square honky-tonk. No effort was being made to make sure the building was level, and it wasn’t. A scorched sign out front proclaimed this travesty of engineering to be Happy Jack’s. Nick pushed Amanda gently forward.

  “Keep moving,” he whispered. “Before someone notices us staring. Try to act naturally.”

  “Are you sure you want me to act naturally? Naturally for me, I mean?” asked Amanda in a normal conversational voice as they all started walking down the road through the middle of town again. Nick couldn’t help but grin.

  “Maybe just act how you imagine normal people act,” Nick amended his instructions.

  “So, not like you either?” she asked impishly.

  “No idea what you mean, ma’am,” he replied in mock affront. Weenie looked around nervously. There were entirely too many familiar smells that he associated with unpleasant events. He kept from whining and tried to sort out the witch’s particular smell. His tail and his ears both perked up perceptibly when he managed to find a wisp of the old hag’s distinctive aroma. With it, his ultra-sensitive nose also caught hints of something very different. It was also something he was familiar with. The scent of something powerful and malevolent could not be mistaken for anything but that which it was. Weenie had literally sniffed Connix’s eye. He picked up his speed out of eagerness. Nick noticed.

  “Hey, boy,” he called as Weenie threatened to leave them entirely behind. “Wait up. No need to hurry so quickly.”

  “Yeah,” agreed a raggedly dressed scarecrow as he stepped from behind a fence corner overgrown with vines and wiry vegetation. “No need to hurry at all. How bout we all just stop here for a minute and have ourselves a little chat, eh?” This scarecrow did not sport a jack-o-lantern for a head. Instead, his noggin was made from a burlap sack that probably used to hold corn. Buttons formed his eyes and his mouth was crudely stitched. Oddly, this unlikely physiognomy was highly expressive and Nick and Amanda had no difficulty reading the less than friendly expressions on it. Another scarecrow and an unutterably ugly little short thing, that Nick assumed was some sort of goblin, coalesced from the dark street and stood barring their way and eagerly fingering an assortment of crudely improvised weapons. Up ahead, Weenie looked back at his humans and their predicament with dismay. He quickly hid himself under a hedge to see what the outcome of this encounter was going to be.

  “What seems to be the problem, sir?” asked Amanda in an innocent school girl voice.

  “I’ll tell ya what the problem is, uh… you.” The scarecrow seemed to be having some difficulty in finding the right way to address Amanda, probably because he didn’t know what she was. “We was told to be on the lookout for ‘spicious personables. Like yourselves. Yes, we was.”

  �
�I don’t find my personable to be all that ‘spicious,” said Amanda, with the vacant eyes and incredulous tone she copied from some of the more idiotic of her classmates. She nudged Nick. “What about you, Nick? Is your personable ‘spicious?” She managed to keep a straight face.

  “Nuh uh,” said Nick. He didn’t trust himself to say more without bursting into giggles.

  “Mebbe we should take you arsonics to see Happy Jack, hisself,” asserted the scarecrow belligerently. Amanda was starting to think that perhaps the burlap bag this creature was using as a head held more old corn than brains.

  “Arsonics?” she repeated incredulously. She assumed this idiot meant ‘arsonists,’ but whatever. “I’ve never arsonicked anything, I’m sure.” She smiled innocently, exposing teeth stained with blood from her busted lip. “I have a most unarsonicly personable.” A glance at Nick’s disapproving frown made her think maybe she was laying it on a little too thick. The scarecrow eyed her with suspicion, unsure whether he was being made fun of. His button eyes turned to Nick as Nick cleared his throat.

  “Uh, Mr. Scarecrow,” began Nick solicitously,

  “Vogelscheuche,” said the scarecrow. It sounded like ‘fogelshike-ha.’

  “Pardon?” asked Nick, bewildered. Did the scarecrow just sneeze?

  “’At’s my name, innit? Mr. Vogelscheuche, to you, kid.”

  “Ok,” continued Nick smoothly, “Mr. Vogelshickle?” He hastened to continue when he saw the annoyed look on the scarecrow’s face and realized how badly he had butchered his name. “Do you have a description for these people you’re looking for?” The scarecrow squinted at him suspiciously. “So, we can help be on the lookout for them, of course,” he added quickly.

  “Er,” said Mr. Vogelscheuche, “Hey, Espantapajaros. What was them arsonics looking like, again?”

  “They was three of ‘em,” replied the other scarecrow, presumably the one named Espantapajaros. He eyed the two of them uncertainly with his beady little eyes. Literally, his eyes were beads. “There was an Irish man what had a crossbow and a cane and all manner of devilment about him. About my height.” They all looked at Nick who stood an inch under five feet and barely came to the scarecrow’s armpit. “You Irish, kid?” he asked.